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Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

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Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#111

Post by Locke1689 »

keiferski wrote: post #109
Locke1689 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful. If a user bypasses a warning dialog from the operating system to run a program they download from the Internet, is it still the OS's fault if it is malware? Sometimes providing a perfect user experience is equivalent to solving the halting problem and not recognizing this is as big a problem as believing that all problems are the user's fault.

An exception can be found for every rule, in just about anything. Nitpicking specific examples and then saying "oh, well this disproves it" proves nothing. 99 out of a 100 times, blaming the user isn't the right move. For the sake of brevity, I used ever and always .

Ah, but we're discussing a specific domain, security, where I think "the user is always right" is often wrong. Requiring a user to memorize 10+ essentially random characters, for example, is an awful user experience, but it is required for security purposes.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#112

Post by Joakal »

Locke1689 wrote: post #102
keiferski wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? It's a pretty fundamental part of usability, design, and business in general. Blaming your users is never a good idea.

Careful. If a user bypasses a warning dialog from the operating system to run a program they download from the Internet, is it still the OS's fault if it is malware? Sometimes providing a perfect user experience is equivalent to solving the halting problem and not recognizing this is as big a problem as believing that all problems are the user's fault.

Yes. It's likely a 'Cry wolf' issue where the OS sends warning dialogs about every download, even safe ones. So the user thinks it's similar file so it's no problem.

Users had complaints about Windows UAC doing this for every instance (not just downloads).

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#113

Post by daemin »

praptak wrote: post #71

This cannot be stated often enough: SO reputation is worthless for assessing fitness for hire. Lots of short, google-able answers to trivial questions will get you much more points than thoughtful answers to hard questions. SO can be useful for preliminary screening, but only if you look at the actual answers.

Like with other aspects of hiring (IQ Tests, Programming Tests, Writing Tests, Interviews, GPA's, Uni Results) they should be a facet in making the final decision.

The way I see it there are two main ways to use someone's Stack Exchange reputation.

First just using the fact that they have an account and reputation, in finding out how involved and engaged they are with the community.

Secondly drilling down into the questions they've asked, and the answers provided to get a better understanding of someone's strengths and weaknesses, and seeing where their expertise lies.

Also at the end if there's no other way to make a decision between two people, one can just take the person with the higher reputation score.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#114

Post by codinghorror »

adrianwaj wrote: post #48
cheald wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you're impressed by minified HTML. Usually, given the CPU cost to minify a page and the fact that savings are in the tens of bytes after gzip, it is nearly certainly an overall performance and user experience loss.

I think it makes the browser's job faster and easier. Minifying for me has improved the speed of my sites.

The savings is fairly minimal after gzip, and it comes at a cost -- removing all readability of HTML view source.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#115

Post by codinghorror »

bayareaguy wrote: post #73
flyosity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who say SO has "a poor UX" are the same people who say that Reddit has "a poor UX". They're conflating gradients, rounded rectangles and text shadows with a user's experience of the site.

Not so. As I commented earlier[1], SO's data/ink ratio sucks compared to YC. 1- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305304

the use case is rather different, though: Hacker News is a list of articles other people have written with discussion and commentary. Stack Overflow is a list of questions from your peers with potential answers. (Also, that's a really old screenshot)

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#116

Post by codinghorror »

barmstrong wrote: post #67

StackOverflow is definitely more important right now. But one thing I think they're messing up is the process for launching new StackExchange sites. They're trying this thing to qualify new sites to ensure they have critical mass, but I think it's too restrictive and hurting their growth. As an example, I "pledged" to contribute to the AI stack exchange site if it were to launch. When it launched as a trial it receiv…

Just to clarify -- we always make the creative commons data available for all our public sites, and even closed sites. There have been two so far: AI and Gadgets. The AI creative commons dump is at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-in... and the gadgets creative commons data dump is at http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/614/electronic-gad...

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#117

Post by codinghorror »

Aqwis wrote: post #18
neutronicus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathoverflow is awesome. I don't know if the stack exchange guys run it (it certainly uses their software), but it is already professionally relevant for practicing mathematicians.

I believe he is referring to Math StackExchange (math.stackexchange.com), a site which was created to serve as a MathOverflow-equivalent for mathematics students or others who aren't professional mathematicians. I've found Math StackExchange to be highly useful, and the quality of the answers you get is higher than anywhere else.

mathoverflow.net is an independent Stack Exchange 1.0 site on an old fork of the engine; math.stackexchange.com is a fully qualified Stack Exchange 2.0 peer site on the current rev of the engine. see: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/04/changes-to-stack-excha...

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#118

Post by codinghorror »

kayoone wrote: post #28

SO is a very successfull Site without all the koolaid, wich is great. Hell, the even run everything on Windows... On HN you would probably get beaten to death when saying something like that.

We use a LOT of open source stuff too. We believe in the best of both worlds -- http://blog.serverfault.com/post/stack-exchanges-architectur...

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#119

Post by SoftwareMaven »

I completely agree with this. I tried to get a product management site up and running (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/28281/product-mana...), because I know the value I've gotten from the software development side. It is an impossible task that I've since given up on. My questions now go to Quora.

Re: Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why?

#120

Post by patio11 »

codinghorror wrote: post #82
alain94040 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you the example of the OnStartups answers community. I am logged in on Safari, and when I go to my user page, it says my OpenID is from Yahoo. Fine. Now I open Firefox. I try to login to OnStartups, because it doesn't know who I am. I click on Yahoo, go through the authentication process. Guess what: it says it can't find that account on OnStartups (wrong answer), but finds it on StackOverflow, and asks me…

Are you this Alain? http://answers.onstartups.com/users/502/alain-raynaud if so then your account looks up to date to me, and you were able to log in through Facebook. Realize that this was a legacy SE 1.0 site we imported over, so your account may have had some very old stuff in it, and it may not be representative of SE 2.0 logins.

Respectfully, "We did something on the backend and now some logins no longer function" is a fairly common implementation flaw with OpenID. This is a pretty serious Oops for an identity system. The traditional username/password pair is virtually immune to this, if we assume the developers are competent. (Competence will not solve OpenID delegation, as one example. It is virtually immune to comprehension by mortal minds.)

Something for other HNers to keep in mind if they are considering openID for their next project (flee, flee!)

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